Nokia Doesn't Have a Tablet Strategy…Yet

Nokia has big plans for the tablet market, it’s just not quite sure what they are yet.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop says the company is taking a measured approach to developing the device, which it wants to be “uniquely Nokia,” and if that means being late to market, then so be it.

“There are now over 200 different tablets on the market and only one of them is doing really well,” he told YLE TV. “My challenge to the team is I don’t want ours to be the 201st tablet on the market that you can’t tell from all of the others. We have to take a uniquely Nokia perpesctive. So our engineers are working very hard on something that will be different relative to everything else that’s going on in the market….We could take advantage of Microsoft technology and software, and build a Windows-oriented tablet, or we could do things with some of the other software assets that we have.”

In other words, Nokia doesn’t yet have a tablet strategy.

Which is disappointing, because it really should have one. That said, Elop’s tacit acknowledgement of tablet market realities and Nokia’s embarrassment of operating system “riches” situation is refreshing. The company’s going to be late to market no matter what it does, so why rush things? Better to work hard on differentiation and execution than to rush an unfinished product to market and have it branded unfinished and unusable and have it compared to “the homeless guy who plays air guitar in front of the mall.”